Donna Campbell

Donna Sue Burrows Campbell[1] (born September 17, 1954)[2] is an emergency room physician and an ophthalmologist from New Braunfels, Texas, who is a Republican member of the Texas State Senate from District 25, which stretches from San Antonio to Austin and includes Comal, Guadalupe, Hays, Kendall, northern Bexar, and southern Travis counties.[3]

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Background

Campbell was born in San Diego, California, when her father was in the United States Navy. He subsequently worked as a state highway patrolman in Oklahoma, where she was reared, along with three younger brothers. Her mother was a factory worker who became a registered nurse at the age of forty-eight. Both parents are deceased. Campbell worked her way through college[4] to obtain a bachelor's degree in nursing from what is now the University of Central Oklahoma at Edmond, north of Oklahoma City.[2] She then obtained a master's degree in nursing from Texas Woman’s University in Denton, with specialization in cardiovascular clinical nursing and nursing administration. In May 1989, she received her M.D. from Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center in Lubbock and then completed her residency at the University of Texas Health Sciences Center in Houston. She garnered the Morton Award as an outstanding resident in ophthalmology at the Hermann Eye Center in Houston. Campbell has performed hundreds of eye surgeries in Ghana in West Africa through the Christian Eye Ministry.[5][6]

In 2010, Campbell listed her occupation as the medical director of the emergency department at Columbus Community Hospital in Columbus in Colorado County west of Houston. She was also the emergency department medical director for Christus Jasper Memorial Hospital in Jasper, Texas, and a physician with Gulf Coast Medical Center in Wharton, Texas.[7]

Congressional campaign, 2010

In 2010, Campbell was the Republican nominee for Texas's 25th congressional district seat, but she lost to the Democrat incumbent Lloyd Doggett of Austin, a former Texas state senator and a veteran figure in his party's liberal faction, who still holds that position. Campbell drew 84,849 votes (44.8 percent) to Doggett's 99,967 (52.8 percent). The remaining 2.3 percent was held by the Libertarian Party candidate.[9]

In the congressional race, Campbell had expressed support for a 23 percent national sales tax to replace both the national income and Social Security taxes and had urged greater petroleum and natural gas drilling to make the nation energy-independent, a position that she maintained for her state senatorial race.[10]

State Senate primary

The conservative Campbell, with support of right to life organizations, the Tea Party Movement, and the interest group, Texans for Lawsuit Reform,[10] won the Republican runoff primary held on July 31, 2012, when she handily unseated the long-term moderate Republican incumbent, Jeff Wentworth of San Antonio, 45,308 (66.2 percent) to 23,178 (33.8 percent).[11]

Elizabeth Ames Jones, a former member of the Texas Railroad Commission, ran a strong third in the first primary held on May 29 but was eliminated from the Campbell-Wentworth runoff. Campbell benefited from the same anti-government wave that swept fellow Republican Ted Cruz into the United States Senate. Campbell may have benefited too from combativeness in the primary between Wentworth and Jones. Campbell referred to herself as "a surprise to many political pundits, but I was not a surprise to the people of the district that were ready to have a change in government."[3]Campbell benefited from Jones's endorsement in the runoff and prevailed despite Wentworth's greater campaign financial resources.[10]

Wentworth questioned Campbell's short-term residence in District 25. She moved into a rented house in New Braunfels ten weeks before the Senate filing deadline. She resides there with her husband, Stan Dewayne Campbell, whom she met on a tour of the Holy Land. He was a widower when they married in 2000.[10] Campbell has four daughters, three from her husband's previous marriage, and one, Anna Beth, who was adopted as a newborn c. 2007.[8][4] The Campbells own a house in Columbus, which is outside District 25. At the time of the 2012 elections, Campbell said that she was trying to sell the house in Columbus but had been unable to do so and had therefore rented in New Braunfels. Wentworth found in his opposition research that Stan Campbell had been charged with driving while intoxicated in 1985, fifteen years before the couple wed. Wentworth was forced to apologize for bringing up the DWI in that it did not involve Donna Campbell. Wentworth's son in 2012 faced the same charge.[10]

Wentworth, who supports abortion in cases of rape and incest, refers to the fully pro-life Campbell, accordingly, "She really is an extremist. People don't know that because they've ignored her."[10]

General election of 2012

In the general election held on November 6, 2012, Campbell defeated the Democrat John Kenneth Courage, Sr. (born 1951), a high school teacher from San Antonio.[3] Campbell polled 232,261 votes (65.6 percent) to Courage's 121,906 votes (34.4 percent).[12]The underfunded Courage has previously run unsuccessfully for the United States House of Representatives in District 21 and the San Antonio City Council. Campbell led in all counties except for Travis, the capital county, in which Courage polled a margin of some one thousand votes.[3]

Meanwhile, with Wentworth in retirement, Campbell sees her role as a freshman member of the Senate, as one of providing "reinforcement" for what she expects to be "the most conservative Senate in Texas history."[3]